1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention described herein pertain to the field of computer systems. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, one or more embodiments of the invention enable the generation of audience-specific documents through use layer specific inheritance rules.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are many problems associated with generating a document for multiple audiences comprising differing languages in varying media types such as an electronic or print media catalog. A document that is targeted to more than one language may also need to take into account the different regional, regulatory, and cultural requirements of the audience for which the document is published. In addition, the generated document needs to be properly formatted regardless of the media type for which the document is generated.
Current systems for generating documents fail to take into account the various complexities that cause documents to vary on a publication-by-publication basis. When publishing documents for a global audience, data that is an appropriate substitute in one instance of the document may not be an adequate substitute in a different instance. French regulations, for instance, prohibit imagery that shows a hypodermic needle whereas in other countries such images are permissible. The same concept is also applicable to language, cultural, and regional or regulatory requirements associated with a particular document. Current systems provide mechanisms for publishing documents in multiple languages, but require brute force entry of multi-lingual data in a way that tends require large amounts of duplicate operator entries for similar languages, cultural, regional or regulatory specific embodiments of a document. For example, current systems require a complete set of entries for two languages that may only differ in a small way such as United Kingdom and United States English.
Generating a document for alternate media types requires data that defines the required output format for the particular media type. Current systems that perform this function are generally hardcoded and when a particular piece of data changes, all target media documents must be manually adjusted.
Removal of support for a given audience or media type would require deleting rows or columns in a database as the database is generally structured in current systems. Adding support for a new audience or media type requires copying large amounts of data, either rows or columns using current methods.
For at least the limitations described above there is a need for system that eliminates data entry duplication and allows for the transparent generation of audience specific documents into multiple languages, regions, cultures or regulatory zones using a variety of media types.